With he original disks Sucyrom did not come in until BV, however that is not the case with later made disks, they then added it from the base game on.

I am fairly sure it broke my disk drive and after putting on that first large patch my game would not run at all. I had to uninstall and reinstall and not use that until they remade that patch. There was a first version, a second version and possibly even a third version.

@FranH: Well, given that EA's average net income per quarter is currently around $24,000,000 (I'm a stockholder, so I get the quarterly financials), I don't think having to pay $5,000,000 to a patent troll is going to hurt them much. it's a lot to you and me, but to a company like EA? Not so much.

As for SecuROM in general...I'm sure I have it on all machines that I've played the game on which is..um...5 machines, I think? I've not had any issues with any of them, and I confess that I have *gasp* pirated stuff on my computers, though nothing having to do with games. Which isn't to say that no one who's had issues has a legitimate complaint. It's just that different people have different versions of SecuROM as well as different machines that react differently to SecuROM. And I'm sure that some people with busted computers/components who blame SecuROM for their woes might not always be barking up the right tree. I'm pretty sure that the newers incarnations of SecuROM aren't as bad/restrictive as the first/old versions. I haven't heard an outpouring of outrage since the UC's release, at least.

Well, I'm rather a 'anti-Securom" person from way, way back and I used to be on RYG's staff, so I can't be impartial, but EA would be wise to rethink their use of it for at least Sims 2, if only because it serves no useful purpose. EA has stopped supporting 2, and in that case, it's a useless piece of spyware that has no good in it.
I've heard many stories of the damage it can wreak. Even when the newest form of it is rather bland, I do not like the principle of it, which is to spy on people when they're playing their game.
Other companies have dropped their DRM and have not had ill effects. EA is one of the few that has been paranoid about it from day 1 and it has served to alienate many people from playing their games. Coupled with Origin, it makes EA the corporate version of the NSA, and that's nothing to be proud of.

As for the money, I couldn't care less what EA has to pay. They can well afford it, and being taken to the cleaners by a copyright troll is one of the hazards of the business.

Hey, I'm a hippie. I don't like DRM schemes on principle. Especially when they don't do what they're intended to do, anyway, and only inconvenience paying customers. Still, it is what it is; companies, no matter how "evil," have the right to try to protect the property that they paid lots of money to develop and all that. It's just that a good way to do so apparently hasn't been invented yet. Sony tried to do so by developing SecuROM, but obviously failed in key ways. As for EA's use of it...I imagine they paid a lot of money to license it from Sony, so I imagine they're going to get what they see as their money's worth out of that license. Frankly, I see Origin as far more invasive than SecuROM.

But whatever the case, all the ethical arguments in the world don't change the fact that a lot of people who have SecuROM on their machines have suffered no ill effects from it. That doesn't negate those who have had ill effects, but I think the majority of people do not. So, I don't think it's something to be necessarily paranoid about. It'd be nice if it had been removed for the UC, but since all they did was create a digital bundle of the collection packs, all of which have SecuROM...Well, extricating SecuROM from it might have been more trouble than it was worth, for something that they were giving away for free.

I agree with you about Origin, totally. It's far worse than Securom ever was, and I despise EA for having the requirement to install it before playing any recent games. It's not a benign or harmless piece of technology. It's designed to capture data while playing, and to enable EA to use that data for their marketing plans.

It's the one and only reason I have never (besides the fact that I never liked Sims 3) touched anything after Sims 2. I will never allow any company to tie my computer to their spyware. What I do on my computer in my house is not any of EA's business.

That data is mine, not theirs.

My experience of SecuROM was that it made my DVD burner unreliable. Sometimes it would work fine, but the failure rate of burning DVD increased considerably. I think at one point I was ending up with about 25% coasters.

I moved my DVD burning operations over to my laptop for the remaining lifetime of that PC.

The DVD burner got a new lease of life when I wiped the disk and reinstalled Windows to pass it on to a family member, and is still going strong several years later. I removed SecuROM shortly after I noticed it giving me issues, so I've always wondered if it impacted other registry settings which affected DVD hardware, and still left those detrimental tweaks behind even after removal.

It lost them a sale, certainly. After all that nonsense I swore off purchasing all further PC games that could be contaminated with such nasties. M&G was my last games purchase for the PC, and I've not bought either Sims 3 or Sims 4. I don't really want Origin either, thanks.

Nowadays I'm on a Mac (there was nothing much to keep me on Windows after I swore off games), and playing again since the release of the Super Collection. I miss the non-Mac EPs and SPs, but there's a lot to be said for the non-intrusive DRM of the Mac App Store.

I seem to be lucky. I've never had any problems with Origin either.

(Raises hand). In my case, the CD function of my burning programs simply failed entirely, and the DVD function, as you also experienced, was unstable. Much of the time, it worked. Many times, it didn't.

The fallout from the early form of Securom v.7 caused many players who wouldn't have even considered other means to protect their games from this PITA back then to not only consider, but simply just implement them. EA has no one to blame but themselves.

Even if Origin is the benign entity EA implies it is, I still can't trust EA. EA can swear on a pack of llamas that Origin and the new version of Securom is 100% safe, and I won't believe them. I should add, though, that this is my perception. It seems that most of those who have the UC are doing just fine.

The Bon Voyage version of SecuRom, whichever version that was, broke my Disc drive. First it stopped me from playing DVD's which wasn't a massive deal because I didn't use my PC to watch movies and then it stopped reading Discs at all including the game. I have a new computer now and haven't experienced any issues with SecuRom and Sims 2 with the ultimate collection, nor with any expansion I used after Bon Voyage. I even kept Bon Voyage off of my system for the longest time afterward because I was scared I would break my new PC.

I had an issue with The Sims 3 and expansions where my Disc Drive stopped reading the game discs, but it went away after I uninstalled them. Whether that was SecuRom or the Sims 3 I do not know.

Mine does that on occasion, nothing too unfixable though.





My computer consistently crashes the game if Spotify is on (since it's one of those programs that opens by default all the time), but doesn't if I uninstall it, since closing it is a lot more complicated than it needs to be. I wouldn't say Spotify is the evil awful abomination causing all the game crashes, but I would say my computer's probably too dumb to handle Spotify being open at the same time with a game. So even if it's not the direct cause, I prefer anything that keeps bullcrap to a minimum. I bet people are like that towards Securom too.

This is a reiteration, fyi. I purchased a new Windows 8 and with that installed a new game of Bon Voyage purchased when I bought my computer. It took several days of head scratching, trying one thing than another in an effort to figure out why my Sims all-of-a-sudden
1: were losing their hair, 2:were sometimes naked walking down the street, 3:game crashes, 4: oh, you name it. Eventually I removed Bon Voyage and all traces of S.R. Only then was the game playable once more.
I lost entire neighborhoods and any lots created while Bon Voyage was up are not playable.
My guess is since everyone has a different computer, some can work with Bon Voyage and after, and some cannot.

As I understand it, when BV first came out, it was pretty buggy. Lots and lots of people had lots and lots of really weird/catastrophic issues with it. (You go, EA! ) But, so I also understand, patches cleared up the issues. I, myself, have had no trouble with it, but I have no idea if my copy is a "first generation" one; BV was the next-to-last EP I got, and I got it after AL was out, so....

Also, the game was never meant to run with Windows 8, as the game was done developments well before Win 8 was released. Heck, TS2 can be weird when installed on Win 7. So, if you got an older BV disk, then...Yeah, I can imagine there were issues. But I doubt the issues are related to SecuROM at all, because SecuROM has nothing to do with how the game runs. I imagine your issues were a combination of good 'ol buggy BV (especially if you didn't patch it) and Windows 8. I imagine that would be a pretty terrible cocktail, indeed. I hope you got things running again, though. Too bad about BV, though. It has some fun features. (I can take or leave vacations, but I love being able to build beach lots, even though they are kind of a pain in the butt to place in neighborhoods.)

How bad is SecuRom? How long is a piece of string? I've heard the full gamut of responses from "No difference" to "It totally messed up my PC". In my case, I had quite a problem with it in Apartment Life because that specific version wouldn't work with my PC. Earlier and later versions were both OK, but the one with Apartment Life just wasn't a happy camper for whatever reason. It was so bad that I had to email the log file to SecuRom so they could fix it and send me a working copy. (Thankfully the problem was remedied in the version bundled with Mansions & Gardens). Apart from that, the only problem I've had personally is that SecuRom has a nightmare of a time trying to read disks that aren't perfect. I have to clean the M&G disk regularly to ensure I can continue to play it. SecuRom has never had an issue with any other program I've cared to run alongside it, provided I haven't been silly enough to literally pre-load the DVD software before initiating Sims 2 (or Civilization III, which I also play and also uses SecuRom). If I use such programs at different times, with the Sims 2/Civ III disk not in my computer, SecuRom doesn't blink for me.

There are better copy protection methods around, but I've experienced worse too. I would suggest making a good full backup of your computer, trying the vanilla version with SecuRom (and, if you have a newer SecuRom-bearing game, ensuring that's also installed on your computer - the newer versions were better than the older ones). If it causes problems with reading the disk or anything similar, run the logging software that comes with the game and email it to SecuRom (EA doesn't support SecuRom on Sims 2 but last I checked SecuRom itself still does). If that doesn't work, or you have something more major like a conflict with other software, uninstall SecuRom (using the links SimsForever15 and Gazania gave) and revert to a Sims 2 expansion combination without SecuRom (Seasons and before used SafeDisc for the job SecuRom does with Bon Voyage onwards - it was totally obsolete by Seasons, but it rarely interferes with computers)..

[Edited to add:] iCad, if you have BV and AL installed, the version of SecuRom with AL takes precedence... ...unless your BV is part of a compilation or such released after AL, or you have at some point installed a SecuRom-bundled game released after AL. The SecuRom on a given computer is whatever was the latest version bundled with any software installed since either the last "full" uninstall of SecuRom or the last reinstall of the operating system.